Various components of a motor vehicle can impact occupant experience more so than others. For example, cast alloy wheels are capable of either resonating translation of noise or reducing translation of noise to a passenger compartment of the motor vehicle. When traveling over rough road surfaces, wheels are prone to vibrate, which is known to translate vibration resonance throughout the passenger compartment by way of the axles. Also, noise generated by the interaction of the tire with the road surface can generate vibrations of the gases inside the tire cavity between the tire and the wheel rim. This vibration inside the tire cavity is known to be transmitted through the wheel and into other vehicle components and eventually into the occupant space of the vehicle. In addition to occupant dissatisfaction, high levels of vibration are known to cause failure to various vehicle components.
While mathematic modeling is sometimes used to predict the propensity of a wheel to vibrate by modeling stiffness of a particular wheel configuration, mathematical modeling in this instance has limits. It is still necessary to physically test a wheel to determine the wheels propensity to vibrate, which is also indicative of stiffness of the wheel. One method of determining propensity of a wheel to translate vibration is to mount a wheel on a fixture by striking the wheel to measure propensity of the wheel to translate vibration. However, little thought has gone into adverse implications of a poorly designed fixture upon test results. For example, the fixture that has been poorly designed is prone to also vibrate, which is known to skew test data of the wheel. Therefore, it would be desirable to design a fixture for testing propensity of a wheel to translate vibration, where the fixture has no adverse contribution to the test results.